A new wave of handheld Steam Deck clones might be powered by AMD’s Ryzen Z1 processors.

The majority of gaming PCs are powered by Nvidia GPUs, but AMD has gained a lot of customers because to its ability to provide closely integrated Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs for more integrated game devices like consoles and handhelds (and lots of revenue). The most noteworthy of them is Valve’s Steam Deck, which combines a CPU with a Zen 2 architecture and a GPU with an RDNA 2 architecture to deliver enough performance for the majority of games.

Although though AMD created the Steam Deck’s chip specifically for Valve, the firm today unveiled two Ryzen processors intended for the increasing number of handheld Computers that resemble Steam Decks made by other companies. In order to outperform the APU in the Steam Deck, AMD’s Ryzen Z1 and Z1 Extreme (respectively) combine 6 or 8 Zen 4-based CPU cores with 4 or 12 RDNA 3-based GPU cores using a 4 nm manufacturing process.

The majority of gaming PCs are powered by Nvidia GPUs, but AMD has gained a lot of customers because to its ability to provide closely integrated Ryzen CPUs and Radeon GPUs for more integrated game devices like consoles and handhelds (and lots of revenue). The most noteworthy of them is Valve’s Steam Deck, which combines a CPU with a Zen 2 architecture and a GPU with an RDNA 2 architecture to deliver enough performance for the majority of games.

Although though AMD created the Steam Deck’s chip specifically for Valve, the firm today unveiled two Ryzen processors intended for the increasing number of handheld Computers that resemble Steam Decks made by other companies. In order to outperform the APU in the Steam Deck, AMD’s Ryzen Z1 and Z1 Extreme (respectively) combine 6 or 8 Zen 4-based CPU cores with 4 or 12 RDNA 3-based GPU cores using a 4 nm manufacturing process.

The Asus ROG Ally, a new portable gaming PC that Asus perplexingly chose to introduce on April 1, would initially be powered by the Ryzen Z1 CPUs. Several businesses use April Fools’ Day as an opportunity to unveil «funny» pranks, and Asus had to reassure the public that «it’s real» and «wasn’t an April Fool’s [sic] joke» after the event.

According to AMD, Asus will make additional ROG Ally announcements on May 11. The ROG Ally prototype’s «Turbo Mode,» which permits the APU to draw up to 30 W of power, is where AMD derived all of its performance data; settings that sacrifice performance in favor of longer battery life might not perform as well.

Although while Ryzen Z1-based handhelds ought to be able to function more quickly overall than the Steam Deck, SteamOS from Valve might still have a competitive advantage. Even while Windows, which has excellent game compatibility, ships on other portable Computers like the AYA Neo, its mouse-and-keyboard-focused user interface doesn’t work well with small-screen handhelds. We don’t know when (or whether) a «handheld mode» that would address some of these issues has been tried by some Microsoft engineers.